How much connected speech do learners
need?
When learners listen to authentic English, they’ll hear
connected speech constantly. If they can’t understand
connected speech, they won’t be able to understand spoken
English. Therefore, it’s very important to help students
become aware of connected speech in authentic English and
practice hearing and understanding it.
It’s less urgent for students to learn to produce connected
speech themselves. They can usually communicate well even
without using all the sound changes we’ve talked about. But
to help students prepare for real world English, we need to
help them understand the changes that take place in
connected speech.
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